Initial-letter contraction
“there” in braille
Two cells for the whole word, however long it is — 5 letters here, a saving of 3 cells. “there” is the 61st most common word in English.
Dots 5, then dots 2-3-4-6
Unicode ⠐⠮ — 5 letters in two cells
How to recognise it
Its second cell is the “the” groupsign, not a t — and that is not a coincidence. “There”, “these” and “their” all use it, separated only by which prefix comes first, which is the neatest piece of design in this whole list.
The second cell is the “the” sign, not a t
You would expect a t. What follows the prefix is the the groupsign, chosen for the shape of the word rather than its spelling. Nine of the thirty-three do this.
Learn it with its two sisters
“there” and “these” and “their” are written with the same second cell. Only the prefix separates them, which means the hard work of telling them apart is done by one cell — and learning them as a set is far quicker than meeting them one at a time.
Where it may appear inside a longer word
Only at the start of a word. UEB allows these inside a longer word only where the letters keep their meaning, which spelling cannot decide, so this site settled it by counting: every English word containing “there”, checked against the reference, split by where the letters sat.
In the in the middle and at the end the letters are the contraction less than half the time, so using it there would be wrong more often than right.
Longer words that keep it
1 word among the 5,000 commonest in English is written with this contraction inside it. These are some of them, and every one was taken from this site's own output rather than chosen by hand.
| Word | In braille (Grade 2) | Grade 1 | Grade 2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| therefore | 9 cells | 4 cells |
The other 21 words under dots 5
The largest of the three prefix groups, so the prefix itself tells you little — the second cell does the work.
character, day, ever, father, here, know, lord, mother, name, one, ought, part, question, right, some, through, time, under, where, work, young.
Check your own text
Type “there” into the translator with Grade 2 selected to see both cells, or take the full list.
“there” in braille as an image
Both cells as a picture: dot 5, then dots 2, 3, 4 and 6 — the whole word in two cells rather than 5 letters.
